|
|
   |
   |
 |
 The
versatile performer with the winning voice
moves
among her many projects with ease.
|
By
Susan Reiter |
 |
Audra McDonald. |
Audra McDonald in a scene from the Broadway production
of A Raisin in
the Sun. |
Audra McDonald and Ethan Hawke in a scene from the Lincoln
Center Theater production of Shakespeare’s Henry
IV. |
 |
 |
Three above: Audra McDonald’s three recordings
have received critical acclaim. |
Michael Cerveris and Audra McDonald performing in Passion.
|
Audra McDonald performing at the American Songbook Series
at Lincoln Center. |
No
one could accuse Audra McDonald of having taken it easy last
year. She appeared in two of the season’s most acclaimed
Broadway productions, making a smooth transition from Shakespeare’s
Henry IV to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin
in the Sun – and winning her fourth Tony Award
for portraying Ruth Younger in the latter. McDonald –
best known for her glorious voice and sensitive, insightful
interpretations of theater music of recent and classic vintage
– was also busy with musical pursuits. She could be
heard in major concert halls, performing music by Charles
Ives and John Adams with the New York Philharmonic and with
London’s BBC Symphony Orchestra. She took a few nights
off from Raisin to perform a highly ambitious program
at Zankel Hall, the venerable Carnegie Hall’s hip new
intimate space, introducing a new version of The Seven
Deadly Sins that was composed especially for her.
Outside New York, she found time to perform the challenging
role of Dot in a semi-staged production of Sondheim’s
Sunday in the Park with George at the venerable Ravinia
Festival, and the central role in R Shomon, a bracing
new contemporary musical by Michael John LaChiusa, a frequent
collaborator. By the end of the year, she was readying an
all-new concert program that she introduced in January –
boldly moving more into the arena of popular music, adding
songs by Randy Newman, Laura Nyro, Elvis Costello and Rufus
Wainwright to her already wide-ranging repertoire.
Just contemplating McDonald’s activities is enough to
leave one feeling exhausted, but she makes it all seem effortless.
Ever since New York audiences first sat up and took notice
in 1994 when she let her stunning voice reinvent the role
of Carrie Pipperidge in Carousel, she has never ceased
to impress – and surprise. The range of her talents,
and the varied arenas in which she has triumphed, make her
difficult to categorize – and who would want to? Her
official biography helpfully describes her as a “concert
performer, recording artist and dramatic actress.” Next
March she can add “opera singer,” since she will
be appearing at the Houston Grand Opera in a double bill that
only she could create and tackle: Poulenc’s 1958 virtuoso
work for solo voice, La Voix Humaine, paired with
a brand-new LaChiusa composition.
We are fortunate to be living in the Era of Audra, to experience
the unique glow she projects onstage and the richly individual
interpretations she brings to the music she selects. “Talent
like that comes along every fifty years or so. Every single
force of nature and blessing came together in her,”
remarks LaChiusa, citing Ethel Merman and Barbra Streisand
as similar phenomena. One of the leading lights of a new generation
of musical-theater composers, he first encountered McDonald,
pre-Carousel, when she auditioned for his musical
Hello Again – and turned out to be too young
for the role. “I’ve got to write her a whole show,”
was his reaction to his discovery – and several years
later, he did. “She makes your music live without getting
in the way of it, and that’s never to be taken for granted,”
he notes.
One of the many remarkable aspects of McDonald’s career
thus far is the ease and naturalness with which she moves
among many projects. While she is very much a creature of
the stage, she took on the role of the empathetic nurse in
HBO’s production of Wit, the Pulitzer Prize-wining
play about a woman with cancer, and earned an Emmy nomination.
She turned in a similarly luminous performance in another
meaty television film, Having Our Say: the Delaney Sisters’
First 100 Years, and made an impressive foray into series
television as a senator’s chief of staff in NBC’s
Mr. Sterling.
“I’ve been so lucky with the experiences I’ve
had – regardless of how long they last, or whether they’re
a critical or commercial success,” she said in a recent
phone interview from her Westchester, NY, home. “You
need to make the right choices for yourself. I trust my friends
and family – people who keep you levelheaded –
as far as making career decisions. But I trust my gut more
than anything.”
Reflecting on the contrasting demands of dramatic roles and
her own concerts, she remarks, “I think each of these
mediums feeds the other. During the run of Raisin,
I had performances with the Philharmonic and my concerts at
Zankel. It was always so great to go back into Raisin;
I’d be more open as Ruth because I’d been so open
in those concert settings. And then, because of playing Ruth,
when I go to do a concert, I’m very aware of specificity
– making sure there’s a very specific objective
and reason for each song, for each note.”
The interview found McDonald, 34, in the midst of a relatively
calm period, although she was preparing for her late-March
appearance in Sondheim’s Passion, an intense,
somber 1994 musical about obsessive love. The performances,
presented by Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series,
included a live PBS telecast. She was enjoying the midwinter
time at home with her husband, bass player Peter Donovan,
and four-year-old daughter, Zoe. From April through July,
her calendar includes much time on the road for concerts,
including her May 21 appearance at The Performing Arts Center
at Purchase College in Purchase, NY.
When McDonald came to New York in 1990 from her native Fresno,
CA, to attend the illustrious Juilliard School, she already
had lots of performing experience, having appeared in many
local dinner theater productions; she performed the title
role in Evita at 16. She soaked up the scores of
musicals; as she says now, “Broadway has been the chief
source of inspiration in my artistic life for as long as I
can remember.” But no one ever mentioned Broadway at
Juilliard, where she was in the classical voice department
and received what she describes as “a well-rounded music
education with a slight emphasis on voice.” The highly
disciplined program had her working on French, Italian and
German diction, taking classes in music history and theory.
Her vocal teachers coached her in Mozart arias, but actual
onstage opportunities were minimal.
She soon found them elsewhere. Before she even graduated,
McDonald took on a supporting role in the touring company
of The Secret Garden, a charming, modestly successful
new Broadway musical, and even managed to make her Broadway
debut during the show’s final month on the Great White
Way. She was barely out of Juilliard when she was cast in
Carousel – a Lincoln Center Theater production.
Interestingly, for someone who has identified herself strongly
with new musical theater works, it was in a 50-year-old Rodgers
and Hammerstein classic that she first gained acclaim. That
landmark production, directed by Nicholas Hytner, rethought
the show, making it bracingly fresh. “Nick said, ‘Let’s
pay attention to who these people really are, and what they’re
doing. It doesn’t matter that Billy Bigelow sings beautifully;
he’s a wife beater.’ I was so excited to be part
of this really incredible project. It wasn’t until people
started telling me, ‘you’re making a big impression
here,’ that I had any idea what was going on.”
She must have figured it out by June 1994, when she won the
Tony Award for Featured Actress in a Musical. There was no
way McDonald could have known then, but it was the first of
what has become a quartet of Tonys; she won her first three
before she even turned 30. In 1996, she won for her intense
performance as a headstrong vocal student in Master Class,
Terrence McNally’s acclaimed drama in which a fierce
Maria Callas (Zoe Caldwell) intimidates and inspires young
singers. Certainly it depicted a world McDonald knew firsthand,
and she put her Juilliard training to good use, as the role
had her singing a bravura aria from Verdi’s Macbeth
nightly. Not only did she scale that musical mountain brilliantly,
she more than held her own with Caldwell.
Two years later, McDonald memorably created the role of Sarah
in Ragtime, a rich tapestry of a musical in which
many turn-of-the-century lives intersected, often tragically.
Chalk up Tony Award number three. 1998 also saw the release
of her first recording, Way Back to Paradise, a highly
original compendium of songs by members of the young generation
whom she felt embodied the future of musical theater. In addition
to LaChiusa, they were Adam Guettel, Ricky Ian Gordon and
Jason Robert Brown.
Her commitment to their work – and the acclaim she received
for her lustrous interpretations on this impressive debut
disc – helped bring greater attention and recognition
to these less than commercial but invigorating new talents.
She has continued to include their works in her concert and
cabaret performances and on her subsequent two Nonesuch recordings,
How Glory Goes and Happy Songs, which also
veered more toward the past, including a healthy dose of luscious
Harold Arlen songs – which McDonald seems born to sing.
“Audra has a uniquely flexible instrument, and she uses
it to serve her as an actress,” notes Ted Sperling,
her musical director since 1999, with whom she collaborates
closely when choosing what to perform. “The words are
the first thing that she responds to when we are looking for
new material. If she feels she can relate personally to the
lyric, or inhabit the character in the song, then she’ll
consider it for our repertoire. Now that we’re expanding
to include songs more associated with the pop world, the lyric
has to stand up as a piece of acting material; otherwise it
doesn’t feel like a great fit for Audra.”
In 1999, LaChiusa made good on his intentions with Maria
Christine, a bold, complex musical with a leading role
created for McDonald – a latter-day Medea, a passionate
and tragic figure playing out her destiny in late-19th-century
New Orleans. Her commitment to the role was fierce and uncompromising;
the composer recalls it as “one of the most incredible
performances by an actor I’ve seen.” The show
received a great deal of anticipatory coverage and mixed reviews;
it did not extend beyond its limited subscription run at Lincoln
Center Theater.
For McDonald, Marie Christine was “an incredible
experience, with an incredible cast. I thought it was making
a very bold artistic statement. Things aren’t always
a commercial or critical success. That doesn’t mean
you don’t grow from them, as an artist – and not
being stagnant is the most important thing for me.”
Asked about the pressure of carrying the show, taking on her
first such starring role, she notes, “The pressure I
felt was, let’s do a great job. Let me serve this piece.”
How does she view the predictable revivals, live-action cartoons
and nostalgic pop-music compendiums that dominate Broadway
these days? McDonald is realistic; when it comes to serious
and innovative musicals, “There’s no time to let
them settle in and find an audience.” Even Sondheim’s
shows, after all, don’t rake in the big bucks like Lion
King does, and his most recent musical was performed
in Chicago and Wash-ington but never made it to Broadway.
“A lot of the institutions that can support new musical
theater do their best, but they can’t support it in
a huge commercial venue,” she observes. “But there
are champions out there, like Lincoln Center Theater, or Playwrights
Horizons. I think regional theater companies are really starting
to pay attention in this area, and there are opera companies
doing what they can. If you look at these new musicals, some
of them will be called operas.”
Now she is poised to venture into operatic territory next
year in Houston – something that is both new and yet
familiar, given her Juilliard training. She had sung Poulenc’s
La Voix Humaine, a dramatic tour de force for solo
voice during which a distraught woman pleads over the phone
with the lover who abandoned her, at Juilliard, and loved
it ever since. Certainly its requirements for vocal technique
and theatrical intensity make it an ideal challenge for her.
LaChiusa’s companion piece will focus on the theme of
identity and, he explains, “explore the idea of what
we do to disguise ourselves when we use modern technology
to communicate.” It sounds like an ideal McDonald project,
making connections between the past and the present.
More imminent is her latest concert program, in which she
further eliminates labels and categories, effortlessly juxtaposing
popular music with contemporary musical theater selections.
Reviewing the program in The New York Times, Stephen
Holden called it “a transforming experience.”
“This time I wanted to branch out – to use my
own artistic voice, but to try a new source of material,”
she says. Between touring dates, she will record the program
in May for her next solo disc.
McDonald seems to thrive in the concert setting, revealing
a warm, slyly humorous, life-affirming personality as she
chats effusively between numbers, and casting a sublime, embracing
spell with her scrupulously chosen, artfully arranged music.
“It’s exhausting,” she acknowledges, “because
it’s all you up there. At the same time, it can be invigorating.
There’s no script; you can do what you want. You’re
there to share and have a communion with the audience. That’s
what’s most important.” |
 |
| Susan
Reiter is a New York City-based freelance writer specializing
in the arts. |
|
Audra
McDonald
May 21
The Performing Arts Center
Purchase, NY
914.251.6200;
www.artscenter.org |
|
|
Photo
credits
image 1: Barron Claiborne. image 2: Pamela Springsteen. image
3: Joan Marcus image 4: Paul Kolnick. image 5,6,7: Pamela
Springsteen. image 8: Robert Lightfoot for the Ravinia Festival.
image 9: Jack Vartoogian. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
